more on social bookmarking

Lisa posted earlier about del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website, so I thought I'd post about another social bookmarking site that I found via CultureCat (Clancy Ratliff's blog out of U of Minnesota). This program, H2O Playlist, is described by Ratliff:

H2O Playlists: This service is provided through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and it has a progressive open-access, Creative Commons ethos. It's influenced by MIT's OpenCourseWare and other open education initiatives. If you watch this Flash movie about H2O, you'll see how strongly they're emphasizing teaching and learning. Users are required to publish their playlists with Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licenses, which makes the whole site more collaborative. For example, on each playlist, there's a link that says "Create new playlist based on this one," so users can create derivative playlists with one click (and that's one way people can find each other in addition to the standard tag-surfing -- "tagging along," perhaps). Unlike most other social bookmarking tools, users can't tag one item, but rather they assemble lists of items and tag the lists. For example, I have this list on cyberfeminism. On the list, I have Faith Wilding's article "Where is Feminism in Cyberfeminism?" I can't tag that article, but the whole list has the tags feminism, gender, cyberfeminism, technofeminism, girlculture, cyberculture, women, femininity, and masculinity. Because playlists are meant to be kind of like syllabuses, H2O lets you break the lists into categories, like units or modules. (read more...)

I haven't played around with H20 Playlists much yet, but it looks like a really neat place to build forums, communities, and groups of resources. It works in quite a different way from del.icio.us, though. If you read Ratliff's whole post, she compares del.icio.us, H20, and another social bookmarking site.

Of note: if you're a fan of open source, Ratliff suggests de.licio.us, which runs similarly to del.icio.us, but is open source.

Welcome to the "Summit"

I’d like to welcome you to the “New Research Summit,” coming Friday, May 12. Your participation in this event will be important. If you did not sign up to be part of the “Summit” in person, you can still play a role; your comments on our blog will be very welcome.

I hope that together we can inaugurate an ongoing, exciting discussion among teachers and students of writing and research and the new media. I invite you in particular--if you haven't yet joined in--to begin your participation by reading, posting, and commenting on this “New Research” blog, and I invite you to continue this discussion here afterwards as well. The Summit proceedings will be available after May 12 via streaming video on our website: http://newresearch.uoregon.edu/.

Rhetoric is a discipline more than 2500 years old, a discipline that still refers back to the discoveries of its founders—Aristotle is a lively voice among us. And yet perhaps rhetoric has something to say to the new technologies, to the amazing (and sometimes dreadful) new views opening up electronically every day.

It is certain that the rapidly changing situation of knowledge must cause us to rethink what exactly we mean by “research.” Are we asking questions the same way we once did? Can rhetorical understanding help us to understand these new situations?

What about the sources we use? How can we find them? How are libraries changing?
How can we know what is “credible” when we do find something interesting? Does credibility itself matter in different ways? Is the “cool” more significant than the “credible”?

What about the researcher herself/himself? Does the heroic figure of the lonely scholar pursuing a patient inquiry--a solitary quest of discovery, perhaps, through obscure archives—provide an adequate model for the age of the laptop? Is a more collaborative idea of research beginning to affect even the humanities? If so, is this a good thing?

And what about the ways we “publish” the results of research? Much of our thinking goes on now in public, before publication—on blogs and listservs, in “grey literature,” in informal communication. And might the product of writing and research be more like a performance: a web site, a DVD, a Powerpoint presentation—and might research begin to overlap with creative works? New freedoms, and new ethical issues, are arising--and new questions about the economies of research (grades, credit, copyright, payment, open access, open sources . . .)

I'm looking forward to hearing what you will say.

Interesting information about blogging and bloggers in rhetoric and composition

Hi everyone,
A person named Donna just posted a helpful discussion of social bookmarking on my personal website, The Writing Way. She also gave me a link to a site with information on bloggers and blogging in rhetoric and composition. I thought others might like to see this.

http://ccr.syr.edu/~dmueller/blogs.html

Thanks, Donna!

Lisa Ede
OSU

Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

Dear New Researchers:

Vectors is a peer-reviewed multimedia journal from the USC Annenberg Center for Communication. The website is http://vectors.iml.annenberg.edu

Andrew B.
---------

From the "About Vectors" page:
"...Vectors doesn't seek to replace text; instead, we encourage a fusion of old and new media in order to foster ways of knowing and seeing that expand the rigid text-based paradigms of traditional scholarship. In so doing, we aim to explore the immersive and experiential dimensions of emerging scholarly vernaculars." (more)

From the "Editorial Statement:"
"It seems fitting that the editorial statement for a multimedia journal should itself be enacted in a dynamic form. Yet text continues in many ways to provide us with the means for our clearest form of expression. Thus, we commend this editorial statement to you as a hybrid introduction and metaphor for beginning to experience some of the ideas and pathways that weave their way throughout Vectors. This editorial "statement" attempts in part to represent the multiple collaborations and conflicts that take place in interactive and computational media, highlighting not only the virtual dialogue between creator and producer, but also the tenuous alliance of human and machine intelligence.

One of the primary and ongoing tensions in an academic multimedia journal is the question of how to deal with text. This is not a new question nor is it one that is peculiar to electronic publishing...." (more)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: The Digital Future

"A series of eight discussions hosted by the Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, which examine how the digital age is changing the most basic ways information is organized and classified."

I listened to these talks when they first came out last year and was impressed by their insights. Videos of the talks are now archived at C-SPAN (URL below).

After listening to the eight discussions, three of them struck me as more relevant than the others to the goals of The New Research Summit: David Weinberger's discussion of blogging, Brewster Kahle's "Universal Access to Knowledge," and David M. Levy's "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age."

http://www.c-span.org/congress/digitalfuture.asp

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: . “Our institutions of higher learning might become places where digital natives come to mature.”

The following is drawn from the ECAR Study of Students and Information Technology, 2005: Convenience, Connection, Control, and Learning (ID: ERS0506))

http://www.educause.edu/ers0506/

Tendencies: a hypothesis (The study draws from 18,000 students surveyed)

1. “Our institutions of higher learning might become places where digital natives come to mature. Such a suggestion should not be considered preposterous, since young adults come to us for many other aspects of their social and intellectual development. Viewed in a context that includes findings of the Pew study of teenagers and the Internet, it is tempting to surmise that freshman students arrive at our institutions with a set of electronic core skills. . . Despite these skills, the freshmen in our survey express a lower interest in technology in their course activity and report lower skill levels in course-related technologies. One is tempted to conclude that these young people can make technology work but cannot place these technologies in the service of (academic) work.”

2. “A second thread . . . is the hypothetical birth of the media generation. . . . What did change [between 2004 and 2005] was the number of respondents claiming knowledge of presentation software, along with knowledge of software for creating or editing video/audio and Web sites.

Key Findings:
1. Information technology in the higher education experience adds convenience, connection, and control for students.
2. Students believe that IT in courses enhances their learning.
3. Ownership levels of laptop computers and cell phones among surveyed students rose from 2004.
4. While nearly half (49%) of students surveyed in 2004 obtained broadband access through the university, 39.8 percent of those surveyed did so in 2005.
5. The curriculum continues to be a prime motivator of student IT skill acquisition.
6. The percentage of students using media-intensive applications rose in 2005, although reported skill levels in these applications remained unchanged.
7. Surveyed students continue to prefer a ‘moderate’ amount of IT in their course experience.
8. Students appear to like course management systems.

Students arrive with good IT skills, gained largely outside their courses. They need little further training in the use of IT. That is, in the use of technology. The use of information is another matter. This survey found “a significant need for further training in the use of IT in support of learning and problem-solving skills.”


Students expect:
Convenience
—tech and online resources readily available
--Fast response time
--Tech, services, resources available anytime and anywhere
--converged devices
--Networds and tech support available at all times
Connection
--Mobile electronic connections
--Multiple devices and media that are personal, customizable, and portable
--always neworked for communications
--Members of their communities reachable anywhere and anytime
--Social—work in teams
Control
--Multitasking
--Customization
--Focused on grades and performance
--Manage the undergraduate experience
--Control the when and where of social interaction
Learning
--Rich media and visual imagery, including the ability to integrate virtual and physical
--Inductive discovery—experiential and participatory
--Real-time engagement

“Students see IT in courses not as transformational but rather as supplemental. Students prefer face-to-face interaction with their instructors and with other students.”

•
• Students prefer traditional classroom encounters and so do faculty.
• At Berkeley,” only 16 % of students were willing to watch lecture Webcasts entirely online instead of going to the lecture hall, and 84 % of the students indicated that they preferred to attend the fact-to-face encounters.”
• Younger students like IT in their classes LESS than older students.
IT and CMS (at the UO, Blackboard) improve communications most of all, between faculty and students, and between students

Additional Links & Resources

Organizations:

NITLE is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting liberal education. We provide opportunities for teachers in liberal arts contexts to create transformative learning experiences for and with their students by deploying emerging technologies in innovative, effective, and sustainable ways.

EDUCAUSE LEARNING INITIATIVE (ELI)
(formerly the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, or NLII)
[check out the current poll about comfort levels with emerging technologies, including blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and "Interacting in immersive virtual environments (e.g., Second Life)"]

New Media Centers Consortium . NMC’s mission is to advocate and stimulate the use of new learning and creative technologies in higher education; to demonstrate a true passion for learning and creative expression; to seek and build collaborations and partnerships that extend its work; and to understand and meet the needs of its members as it does so. [The UO is an NMC member institution]

other blogs, articles, & miscellany:

Gardner Campbell's Blog. Gardner teaches literature and film at the University of Mary Washington, where he's also Asst. VP for Teaching and Learning Technologies.

Technology as a liberal art (Inside Higher Ed article by Laura Blankenship, Senior Instructional Technologist at Bryn Mawr College).

Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Introduction: Andrew Bonamici

My name is Andrew Bonamici, Associate University Librarian for Instructional Services. We reorganized the library in 2002 and created the Instructional Services Division to foster integration of media and educational technology programs with so-called traditional library services. My area of responsibility includes reference departments, branch libraries, library instruction, student computer labs, faculty technology consulting and Blackboard management, interactive media development, video production, and campus classroom equipment support. All of these services require close partnership with each other and with academic and technology support units beyond the library, so making connections and assembling teams is a big part of my job.

The topics addressed by “The New Research” conference are directly relevant to my interest in development of UO courses that take full advantage of our tremendous investments in network technologies, communication systems, library collections and services (including digital content), and professional staff expertise. The latter is critical, as no one individual can have all of the skills needed to create and sustain courses with substantial digital/network-enabled components. A flexible and collaborative team approach is essential. For faculty, this degree of partnership in the course development process may be a dramatic departure from the status quo; however, the process holds many rewards and learning opportunities for the participants as well as for the intended student audience.

Many thanks to the New Research planning committee for creating this opportunity. I look forward to the conversation.

p.s. feel free to visit my blog for links and comments on other issues that may be of interest to this group.

Information Literacy as a Liberal Art

Here's an article forwarded by Carol Hixson that argues for considering information within a liberal arts framework. The article would be dated (1996) from an IT perspective, but in the long view of the humanities, it's quite current.

Information Literacy as a Liberal Art

Charlie Lowe's blog

Here's another very interesting blog with lots of links. It's Charlie Lowe's blog site.

http://cyberdash.com/

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking seems to be an increasingly important phenomenon on the Web. I have read some information about it and know that it holds the potential to allow users to create "folksonomies," which are distinguished from the kinds of taxonomies that are typically created by experts, and not by ordinary folks.

I have visited a major social bookmarking site: http://del.icio.us/

But I haven't been able to really understand how this site works or how it would benefit me. If anyone involved with the New Research Summit has information about this, and time to share it, I'd appreciate it.

Lisa Ede
OSU

A blog site you might be interested in checking out

Hello everyone,
This is Lisa Ede from Oregon State University. Michael Faris and I are very excited to be part of this new research summit. I've enjoyed reading the posts so far, and I'm hoping to add some comments, and possibly also new posts, soon.

For now, I thought you might like to know about a very interesting blog hosted by Clancy Ratcliff, a Ph.D. students in the Rhetoric department at the University of Minnesota.

Here's the URL for her blog, Culture Cat: http://culturecat.net/

Lisa

Useful website sources of new media and discussions of uses for each

Here is a a link to a collection of case studies I've written for using new media to teach writing. Mainly I have included delineations of useful website sources of new media:

http://www.uoregon.edu/%7Ekkunyosy/newmedia.htm

Kom Kunyosying

Suzanne Clark and the New Research

I didn’t really begin the “New Research” project with technology. I began with a very traditional kind of inquiry: David Frank (UO Robert D. Clark Honors College) and I were writing a book, and we were doing research on Robert D. Clark in the UO archives. We decided to offer a research class on the wonderful material we were finding, traditional enough in concept—except that it has not been so usual to have undergraduates conduct archival research.

Our classes prompted students to research the sixties at the University of Oregon—student protest, institutional change, and Civil Rights. Together with our students, we found over a thousand documents that were scanned online for all to use. (See http://robertdclark.uoregon.edu). This was starting to be a collaborative-looking effort.

At the suggestions of UO librarian Carol Hixon (Head, Metadata and Digital Services), the records of some of those archives were put on the library’s Digital Collections site (http://libweb.uoregon.edu/diglib/aboutdiglib.html).
And when the student papers were finished, we published them in the UO “Scholar’s Bank,” where Google sends the curious from all over the world to look at them. (https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/handle/1794/168) This is a publication process that students as well as faculty at the University of Oregon can use to make significant scholarship widely available. The technology afforded by Blackboard, the web site, Digital Collections, and Scholar’s Bank had widened the impact of our book project into a whole community. The digital revolution had come for us without our even knowing enough about the technology to have it be part of what we were teaching. We had to rely on the resources of others, but it worked.

One of the students, Sarah Koski, said to me: “We don’t need for you to teach us the new technologies; we need for you to teach us the old stuff: how to make a good argument.” I liked hearing that.

What we know about rhetoric—what we learned from Aristotle and Burke and Perlman—is still fundamental to the new situation of research. Nevertheless, there are obvious ways that the new technologies—in which I am barely competent—might not only enhance but even transform the “old stuff.” There are new opportunities for creativity and invention. And there are, we suspect, ways that new technologies and new media are introducing problems for traditional knowledge that ought to concern us—the proliferating interest in the question of “credibility” is suggestive.

What has changed about writing and research? What are the new problems? New opportunities?

Those questions prompted me to apply for an Instructional Technology Fellowship to explore what I was beginning to call “The New Research.”

The first thing I realized—that I had only vaguely thought about before—is that the new research is not about a lone scholar with a pile of books and/or a computer figuring out a new argument. It’s a moment when professors give up on the lone expert model of teaching as well, since no one knows everything and we all could use some help. In other words, the new research goes back to the old understanding of invention. Inventing an argument does not mean making it up; it’s a process that requires a discourse community.

The new research is intensely collaborative.

Perhaps Michael Bérubé, or Lisa Ede (coming as our keynote speaker), provide new models of the humanities scholar; their blogs are a kind of open door to the office even while work is in progress. (See http://www.michaelberube.com and http://thewritingway.blogspot.com/)

I rapidly changed my course from the lone scholar model to consult with the English Department graduate students that I am calling the “New Media Group”—Raphael Raphael, Carter Soles, and Kom Kunyosying. We held a meeting—written thoughts sent simultaneously over laptops--with about 50 freshmen students of WR 121 to ask them how research overlapped with technology for them, and what they wished we would teach. (Results of that discussion will be posted soon). We decided to have a meeting of our local great minds, called the “New Research Summit.” That is what will happen May 12. We decided to have a web site and a blog leading up to our meeting, where all those attending could read and discuss before we came together. We got help from John Gage and Nicole Malkin (the Center for Teaching Writing). Thanks to Raphael (the web site) and Kom (the blog), you are now joining our collaboration.